by Daniel O'Hara

love

DawnNight like a sheet lifting,In thin light we lie still,Beasts resting on in thisGolden fog of first day;Warm arms soon vine, siftingSlack flesh for the supple,Sudden pleasure, each wishFulfilled before it’s made

Written in RainLike children’s footsteps, pit-pat on the pane.Does this rain touch your skin that I cannot?Cloudy eyes, storm-swaddled planets,Search the blackwetblurred reflection—Visages come. Yes, but not the sought one.

Though you draw first by chemotaxis,Perfume is not all your praxis:Boundless breathings enter me,And other atoms splinter me,And rustlings nestle in my earBefore hair pricks my atmosphere,And twin eyes spool me up like twineTill magnet motion moors the spineAnd thorns of being stop each pore—My skin says there is room for more,And reeling with each fresh impactOur two expanding worlds contract.

Volta“I will make this,” thought God, “I will make that.(One of the thats can name the thises then.)”And all He had to do was say each thingAnd it was done, and good, and all was right.And then came man, and this one thing God named,And then this Adam named this that, that this,And then God gave him woman, Eve, by whichTo breed and lead to us—beasts did the same.There was a flood, of chemicals and such,Which bounced around aboard a barren rockHolding all beings’ potential, earth’s whole stock,Till tongues of lightning (maybe) made it twitch.All life came from this flood, and this is good—We all are equal, and there is no god.

TurnThere are no gods or goddesses abroad,And nobody is perfect, heaven knows(And it knows nothing, for it just aroseFrom our old wish to turn the bad to good).And you’re not perfect, love, how could you be,Being a mix of your parents (both mad),Your crazy country, and whatever oddOdds and ends you brought yourself to being?Perfection’s for our Christs and Christesses,Those dream immortals after whom we lustDown in this rubbish bin wherein the dustOf our desires is dumped—God bless! What’s this?!Dear Goddess, as your eyes gaze into mineThe water in my veins turns into wine!

I thought one of the pictures which inspired this poem might contribute something to its enjoyment. Can you tell which girl is the Rose?

Fading into the photograph some of your classmates,No less important, no less alive, but not you—you stand out,A sullen rose, having a bad day in 1936, or that’s just howYou look. No less hopeful for it, a whole kaleidoscope of lifeSpirals out from the black-and-white school picture,The market streets alive with sensory richness, Galway alleywaysLeading each to different lives. Perhaps you became a nun,The school selling it well, perhaps a nurse, living by the hospital,Perhaps a corpse hours after this was taken, the sullenness sickness.

What became of you? And why is the became more than you areThis 1930s day? Just a rose, unpruned, a flame on film, ready to bloomLike a camera’s flash or to fade like your friendsInto the drear background. Why? Because I cannot know,Because the narrative act of lining you all upAnd saving this second forever sets suspense—what happened next?And next, and next, and after that, and then? What happened?

What is happening, forever now, frame-sized, is you standing,And standing out—your cardigan maybe blue, your eyes as well,Hair light and easy on your well-held head—and looking out,Out at lives coming, possibilities, the schooling done, the ticketTo America, to India, to some escape from your life back then,From discipline and rules and drudgery, from poverty and foolsAnd from, oh from, the stings and thorns that are coming,As surely for you as for your fellows, the failures, the regrets,That what ifs and the if onlys, the sullenness of a girlDeepening into the well-worn despair of womanhood,The children and the husband and the house, the parentsSickening and needing care, the bills, the aches, the worries,All the things that go along with any joys, joys of parenthoodAnd love, if such you knew, joys of shelter and of family,All the joys that sit around a grief, expectant dinersWaiting for a feast, the servants lined around the board,The silver shining and the linen laid, the wine all ready,Just to be uncorked, the dishes coming in, set down with care,The lids lifted, and the horror underneath. Ah, had they but been empty,Then what care? But the rotted flesh, the shattered bone,The food of monsters set out like a kill—And all your ravenous fellows tucking in.

What pains you saw, what joys, what black-and-whites,Will not be known. Only this lonesome rose will grow and die,And only she will ever know the world she found,And what she made of it, and what she left.

Life is not possible of emptiness,Emptiness not of life—But all that I can give, I give,And lose that you might have.Two cannot become one, no moreThan one can become two—And to be half, and meet your half,Might leave two halves, not one.